Affinity publisher - why the green box with dot around layer thumbnail?

[Rich3000]

Very new to Publisher, been using it for about a month. I have some distance pre-press experience - Quark Xpress from 91 - 2006, so not a total newb to general concepts.

I've been scouring the forums and wider web for a couple of hours, and not found mention of this, let alone a fix.

For context, the layers in the attached image are of the page headers on master pages, and exist on all 80 pages... without the mystery boxes. Just this page has the boxes.

I have had them on other master pages, and used resource manager to replace the image (with same file), it updated fine and green box has gone away permanently.

With this one page, I update as above, and the boxes go away. I hit save. I then look at another master. When I go back to the page, the green boxes are back!

What are these boxes for? What are they warning me about... and why is there no mention of them in the manual?

[Rich3000]

It seems no-one knows... 

Do Affinity staff read the forums? Or is it best to submit a bug/support report?

[GarryP]

I’ve never seen anything like that myself.

If you can share the document then we can see if it looks the same for us.

The Staff read the forums but there aren’t many of them and they have to deal with a lot of other things.

[lepr]

18 minutes ago, Rich3000 said:

Do Affinity staff read the forums?

My impression is staff have become far less present since Canva bought Affinity last year.

[thomaso]

On 3/7/2025 at 9:32 PM, Rich3000 said:

What are these boxes for? What are they warning me about...

I don't know either but as GarryP says, maybe the file has indicators for their appearance. They seem to affect Picture Frames + child layers only but not Text layers for instance, correct? Also they seem to be Master Page objects, does the Master Page's Layer Panel show this green items, too?

1 minute ago, lepr said:

My impression is staff have become far less present since Canva bought Affinity last year.

BTW, where there any infos given to the forum about @Dan C, the "(Ex)" at the profile excepted?

[Rich3000]

Thanks for the replies, and offers to inspect the file.

I just opened the file, and to my surprise the boxes are gone! 

I have a feeling there was a bug that was preventing a pic update from registering. It seems that quitting the app may have refreshed things.

I'm rather embarrassed that I hadn't tried rebooting the app, and Mac. Computers and software are so stable these days compared to my time in the industry. I'm out of practice on the 'dealing with issues' front..lol We used to have to restart the macs multiple times a day! I haven't restarted this 16" M1 Pro, for a week, sometimes it goes months without any need. 

If this happen's again (I have two more pages to create), I'll add to the thread and upload the file. But for now the file would only show a fully working document.

[Rich3000]

1 minute ago, PaulEC said:

Probably not that many of them between Friday night and Sunday morning!

Ahh... yes.

Self employment has me working irregular hours and days. I forgot about folks with structure and balance in their lives. Lucky buggers!

[thomaso]

54 minutes ago, Rich3000 said:

We used to have to restart the macs multiple times a day! I haven't restarted this 16" M1 Pro

Mac users also had to consider custom system extensions and possibly switch some off manually to enable others without issues, which improved massively over years.

Nevertheless, with the switch to Apple Silicon chips and especially their different handling of RAM, an occasional reboot seems to have become more useful again than with a late Intel Mac.

https://computercity.com/desktops/mac/why-restarting-your-mac-is-more-important-than-you-think

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

BTW, where there any infos given to the forum about @Dan C, the "(Ex)" at the profile excepted?

As far as I know, nothing public was said about Dan's departure. And that seems fairly normal; most staff departures have not been publicized in the time that I've been an Affinity application and forum user. 

[GarryP]

Rich3000, going back to when you said:

On 3/7/2025 at 8:32 PM, Rich3000 said:

I have had them on other master pages, and used resource manager to replace the image (with same file), it updated fine and green box has gone away permanently.

This suggests to me that the green things could be some kind of ‘debug/developer-only markers/flags’ which are shown when a certain (unexpected?) condition occurs, and they have somehow ‘leaked through’ to the commercial release.

That’s just a complete guess though.

[Rich3000]

21 hours ago, GarryP said:

Rich3000, going back to when you said:

This suggests to me that the green things could be some kind of ‘debug/developer-only markers/flags’ which are shown when a certain (unexpected?) condition occurs, and they have somehow ‘leaked through’ to the commercial release.

That’s just a complete guess though.

It certainly may be what you suggest. The lack of anyone (yet) knowing exactly what they are, within a community of long time users with all the collective knowledge.